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Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene
Living on a damaged planet challenges who we are and where we live. This timely anthology calls on twenty eminent humanists and scientists to revitalize curiosity, observation, and transdisciplinary conversation about life on earth. As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies livability, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet puts forward a bold entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent “arts of living.” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene. The essays are organized around two key figures that also serve as the publication’s two Ghosts, or landscapes haunted by the violences of modernity; and Monsters, or interspecies and intraspecies sociality. Ghosts and Monsters are tentacular, windy, and arboreal arts that invite readers to encounter ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones, graves, radioactive waste—in short, the wonders and terrors of an unintended epoch. Karen Barad, U of California, Santa Cruz; Kate Brown, U of Maryland, Baltimore; Carla Freccero, U of California, Santa Cruz; Peter Funch, Aarhus U; Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College; Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford U; Donna J. Haraway, U of California, Santa Cruz; Andreas Hejnol, U of Bergen, Norway; Ursula K. Le Guin; Marianne Elisabeth Lien, U of Oslo; Andrew Mathews, U of California, Santa Cruz; Margaret McFall-Ngai, U of Hawaii, Manoa; Ingrid M. Parker, U of California, Santa Cruz; Mary Louise Pratt, NYU; Anne Pringle, U of Wisconsin, Madison; Deborah Bird Rose, U of New South Wales, Sydney; Dorion Sagan; Lesley Stern, U of California, San Diego; Jens-Christian Svenning, Aarhus U.
352 pages, Paperback
Published May 30, 2017
About the author
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
14 books312 followersAnna Lowenhaupt Tsing is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place and coeditor of Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
August 26, 2019
Every essay in here is worth a read, but this is from the especially brillaint “Shimmer: When All You Love is Being Trashed” by Deborah Bird Rose:
“To act as if the world beyond humans is composed of ‘things’ for human use is a catastrophic assault on the diversity, complexity, abundance, and beauty of life” (G55)
“The legacies of Western mechanism have manifested through repeated assertions of human exceptionalism—that man is the only animal to make tools; that man is the only animal with language, a sense of fairness, generosity, laughter; that man is the only mindful creature. On one hand, all of these claims to exceptionalism have been thoroughly undermined. Other beings also do wonderful and clever things; we are not a unique outlier but rather are part of various continua. On the other hand, however, the term Anthropocene reminds us that it is not yet time to jettison a sense of human exceptionalism. Instead, by foregrounding the exceptional damage that humans are causing, the Anthropocene shows us the need for radically reworked forms of attention to what marks the human species as different” (G55).
“In an ecologically attentive recursion, we find that man is the only animal to voraciously, relentlessly, and viciously wreck the lifeworld of earth. Man is the only animal to systematically torture members of its own species, as well as members of countless other species, and to engage in seemingly endless and often wildly indiscriminate killing” (G55).
“A recent example of violence comes from an event in the northern Australian town of Charter Towers in December 2013. A group of residents had complained for some time about the maternity camp of flying foxes in a municipal park. In their view, the creatures were ‘pests.’ And so they organized and conducted an assault. It happened with local government approval; in no way was it a dirty little secret. The assault showed us (yet again) that man is the only animal that attacks defenseless creature with smoke, water cannons, and firecrackers; that uses helicopters to fly low so as to terrify flying foxes and create downdrafts that break their wing bones. Man is the only animal that shoots other creatures with paintball guns, and when the creatures flap around in terror or fall to the ground injured and in shock, man is the only animal that cheers” (G56). AND “This portrait of human cruelty is as one-sided as were earlier accounts of our wondrous superiority. But when we highlight the pitiless and destructive qualities of humans, we see the desperate need to find ways to recuperate rational and mutually beneficial sides of the story about who we are and of what we are capable” (G56)
“So care is an ethical response involving tenderness, generosity, and compassion, and care is an ongoing assumption of responsibility in the face of continuing violence and peril” (G58).
“In this time of extinctions, we are going to be asked again and again to take a stand for life, and this means taking a stand for faith in life’s meaningfulness” (G61).
“To act as if the world beyond humans is composed of ‘things’ for human use is a catastrophic assault on the diversity, complexity, abundance, and beauty of life” (G55)
“The legacies of Western mechanism have manifested through repeated assertions of human exceptionalism—that man is the only animal to make tools; that man is the only animal with language, a sense of fairness, generosity, laughter; that man is the only mindful creature. On one hand, all of these claims to exceptionalism have been thoroughly undermined. Other beings also do wonderful and clever things; we are not a unique outlier but rather are part of various continua. On the other hand, however, the term Anthropocene reminds us that it is not yet time to jettison a sense of human exceptionalism. Instead, by foregrounding the exceptional damage that humans are causing, the Anthropocene shows us the need for radically reworked forms of attention to what marks the human species as different” (G55).
“In an ecologically attentive recursion, we find that man is the only animal to voraciously, relentlessly, and viciously wreck the lifeworld of earth. Man is the only animal to systematically torture members of its own species, as well as members of countless other species, and to engage in seemingly endless and often wildly indiscriminate killing” (G55).
“A recent example of violence comes from an event in the northern Australian town of Charter Towers in December 2013. A group of residents had complained for some time about the maternity camp of flying foxes in a municipal park. In their view, the creatures were ‘pests.’ And so they organized and conducted an assault. It happened with local government approval; in no way was it a dirty little secret. The assault showed us (yet again) that man is the only animal that attacks defenseless creature with smoke, water cannons, and firecrackers; that uses helicopters to fly low so as to terrify flying foxes and create downdrafts that break their wing bones. Man is the only animal that shoots other creatures with paintball guns, and when the creatures flap around in terror or fall to the ground injured and in shock, man is the only animal that cheers” (G56). AND “This portrait of human cruelty is as one-sided as were earlier accounts of our wondrous superiority. But when we highlight the pitiless and destructive qualities of humans, we see the desperate need to find ways to recuperate rational and mutually beneficial sides of the story about who we are and of what we are capable” (G56)
“So care is an ethical response involving tenderness, generosity, and compassion, and care is an ongoing assumption of responsibility in the face of continuing violence and peril” (G58).
“In this time of extinctions, we are going to be asked again and again to take a stand for life, and this means taking a stand for faith in life’s meaningfulness” (G61).
April 5, 2021
brother this is very well written + is blowing my mind but u can't critique colonialism and then describe a white academic as a "pioneer" in their field (especially when their "field" is really just putting Indigenous knowledge in academia????????)
July 20, 2018
I am enthousiastically reading a wonderful book called Art of Living on a Damaged Planet (Anna Tsing and others, 2017). It is an interesting collection of scientific, philosophical, as well as artistic, anecdotal and feminist essays on the impact of homo sapiens on life on earth, of which -of course- we are part.
I am happy with the book, but I do think the goal the book sets itself (by telling 'entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions' creating arts of living and eventually surviving in this world) can never be achieved because of not including indigenous stories, mythologies and experience. A painful ommission.
Still, I am giving 5 stars, because most essays are very well written, very informative and insightful and I love the multidisciplinary approach of the project.
I am happy with the book, but I do think the goal the book sets itself (by telling 'entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions' creating arts of living and eventually surviving in this world) can never be achieved because of not including indigenous stories, mythologies and experience. A painful ommission.
Still, I am giving 5 stars, because most essays are very well written, very informative and insightful and I love the multidisciplinary approach of the project.
May 20, 2021
What a fascinating collection, some bits were a little dense for me, but i had a really good time slowly making my way through all of these essays from different people all about their highly specialized areas of knowledge and study. fantastic final chapter in the Monsters section that really put a bow on it.
January 9, 2018
Riveting collection of multidisciplinary, experimental essays about living in the late stages of earth as we know it. This is a beautiful book containing two volumes and full of illustrations and pictures. "Monsters" is about symbiosis, the microbiome, and parasites; "Ghosts" is more overtly concerned with destruction of the earth and it's systems.
July 12, 2018
This was a fascinating book. I really enjoyed it even though it was quite academically written and some of it probably went over my head. Fascinating topics and essays.
March 26, 2021
This book dropped me down into the deep space, the heart space, the realm of the tender, grieving, joyful.
It did this by telling me about ants, lichen, flying foxes, and other kin. The authors included in this book pay close attention to others. They learn from others, but don't force any of them into a trite 'object lesson.' It hurt to read this book. But it was that kind of pain I also feel when there is just too much beauty.
One essay ("No Small Matter" by Karen Barad) felt too thick with high-brow continental jargon. The rest were only as complex as they needed to be to honor their subject matter.
This is the sort of book that almost makes me want to reenter academia. What a beautiful thing to do with these primate brains of ours.
It did this by telling me about ants, lichen, flying foxes, and other kin. The authors included in this book pay close attention to others. They learn from others, but don't force any of them into a trite 'object lesson.' It hurt to read this book. But it was that kind of pain I also feel when there is just too much beauty.
One essay ("No Small Matter" by Karen Barad) felt too thick with high-brow continental jargon. The rest were only as complex as they needed to be to honor their subject matter.
This is the sort of book that almost makes me want to reenter academia. What a beautiful thing to do with these primate brains of ours.
Want to read
May 10, 2017I received a free electronic copy of this interesting collections of essays from Netgalley, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and University of Minnesota Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all, for sharing your hard work with me.
PUb date May 30, 2017
PUb date May 30, 2017
September 9, 2017
This book is really fucking sweet and is a must-read for anyone looking to grapple what caring about the environment can or should look like in the Anthropocene. It'll make you reimagine what's possible, and what could possibly be cooler?
June 18, 2018
An interesting, even eclectic, group of essays that somehow suggest that not all ladders lead to humans.
December 16, 2020
Three passages from Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet:
*
In a 1963 Warner Brothers cartoon featuring Ralph E. Wolf and Sam Sheepdog – originally created by Chuck Jones (in 1953) then remade by ex-Jones animators Phil Monroe and Richard Thompson – a wolf and a sheepdog share a companionable dailiness and friendship involving coffee together in the morning and a return home arm in arm at the end of the day. In between, of course, they assume their roles as enemies: the sheepdog guards the flock, while the wolf devises numerous stratagems to steal the sheep, foiled at every turn by a seemingly dopey yet powerful and alert guard dog. The cartoon, with its reference to the workaday world, cleverly points to the human cultural roles within which dog and wolf are forced to play out their opposed roles and marks as capital the framework for their opposition. There is an invisible boss and a system within which they must perform: someone – presumably human – owns the flock, and both are employed in its maintenance and devastation. The cartoon is knowing and innovative in that it remarks on the “insiderness” to human culture of the wolf – he is supposed to try to try to steal the sheep, although, in this fort-da of mastery and triumph over trauma, he will never succeed. Instead, his actions confirm and reconfirm the superior agency of the human creation: the sheepdog. Not matter how much the thief tries to bring down the empire, he is foiled. Part of the critique this cartoon offers is to assert that the economic system of private property and primitive accumulation requires an enemy.
– Carla Freccero, Wolf, or Homo Homini Lupus
*
The study of collective behavior so far has focused on identifying the algorithms, or rules, that connect individuals to produce outcomes for the group. There are unresolved philosophical questions about what it means to understand collective behavior. Biologists have struggled for centuries between two alternatives, a struggle that continues because both alternatives are incorrect. One option is that each individual, ant or cell, is working independently off an internal program, currently envisaged as a sort of computer program contained in, created, and carried out by genes, and that all of these independent actions add up to make the organism, or colony, or tissue. The other is that there is another entity at the level of the whole system, such as the embryo, or superorganism, that somehow drives the relations among the individual entities. We need to develop new language and sets of metaphors that avoid both of these alternatives and instead describe collective behaviour as a tangle of overlapping connections that is constantly being created, without any locus of control.
– Deborah M. Gordon, Without Planning: The Evolution of Collective Behaviour in Ant Colonies
*
In Kupny’s lifetime, Soviet socialist modernization delivered a great deal. It put an end to illiteracy, epidemics, and famine, while cleaning up daily life with indoor plumbing, public bathhouses, and central heating. Socialism also enriched life with pensions, paid vacations, affordable housing, free health care and education, and an impressive network of libraries, theatres, concert halls, and clubs. The socialist state lavished this attention foremost on trained, urban, blue-collar workers like Kupny, while outwardly focusing political rhetoric on equality and the ascendance of the working class. The contrasts in 2014 with the past were stark. In postsocialist, post-shock-capitalism society, working classes have been left in chronic poverty and joblessness, while pensions have evaporated, paid vacations are a nostalgic memory, and equality – well, no one thinks about equality anymore. On this panorama, the achievements of the Soviet technocratic planning state look better and better.
– Kate Brown, Marie Curie’s Fingerprint: Nuclear Spelunking in the Chernobyl Zone
*
In a 1963 Warner Brothers cartoon featuring Ralph E. Wolf and Sam Sheepdog – originally created by Chuck Jones (in 1953) then remade by ex-Jones animators Phil Monroe and Richard Thompson – a wolf and a sheepdog share a companionable dailiness and friendship involving coffee together in the morning and a return home arm in arm at the end of the day. In between, of course, they assume their roles as enemies: the sheepdog guards the flock, while the wolf devises numerous stratagems to steal the sheep, foiled at every turn by a seemingly dopey yet powerful and alert guard dog. The cartoon, with its reference to the workaday world, cleverly points to the human cultural roles within which dog and wolf are forced to play out their opposed roles and marks as capital the framework for their opposition. There is an invisible boss and a system within which they must perform: someone – presumably human – owns the flock, and both are employed in its maintenance and devastation. The cartoon is knowing and innovative in that it remarks on the “insiderness” to human culture of the wolf – he is supposed to try to try to steal the sheep, although, in this fort-da of mastery and triumph over trauma, he will never succeed. Instead, his actions confirm and reconfirm the superior agency of the human creation: the sheepdog. Not matter how much the thief tries to bring down the empire, he is foiled. Part of the critique this cartoon offers is to assert that the economic system of private property and primitive accumulation requires an enemy.
– Carla Freccero, Wolf, or Homo Homini Lupus
*
The study of collective behavior so far has focused on identifying the algorithms, or rules, that connect individuals to produce outcomes for the group. There are unresolved philosophical questions about what it means to understand collective behavior. Biologists have struggled for centuries between two alternatives, a struggle that continues because both alternatives are incorrect. One option is that each individual, ant or cell, is working independently off an internal program, currently envisaged as a sort of computer program contained in, created, and carried out by genes, and that all of these independent actions add up to make the organism, or colony, or tissue. The other is that there is another entity at the level of the whole system, such as the embryo, or superorganism, that somehow drives the relations among the individual entities. We need to develop new language and sets of metaphors that avoid both of these alternatives and instead describe collective behaviour as a tangle of overlapping connections that is constantly being created, without any locus of control.
– Deborah M. Gordon, Without Planning: The Evolution of Collective Behaviour in Ant Colonies
*
In Kupny’s lifetime, Soviet socialist modernization delivered a great deal. It put an end to illiteracy, epidemics, and famine, while cleaning up daily life with indoor plumbing, public bathhouses, and central heating. Socialism also enriched life with pensions, paid vacations, affordable housing, free health care and education, and an impressive network of libraries, theatres, concert halls, and clubs. The socialist state lavished this attention foremost on trained, urban, blue-collar workers like Kupny, while outwardly focusing political rhetoric on equality and the ascendance of the working class. The contrasts in 2014 with the past were stark. In postsocialist, post-shock-capitalism society, working classes have been left in chronic poverty and joblessness, while pensions have evaporated, paid vacations are a nostalgic memory, and equality – well, no one thinks about equality anymore. On this panorama, the achievements of the Soviet technocratic planning state look better and better.
– Kate Brown, Marie Curie’s Fingerprint: Nuclear Spelunking in the Chernobyl Zone
September 5, 2020
It's rare that I read anything more academic than the news these days, but I'm glad I did dive into this book of monsters and ghosts. So many of the central ideas of these essays--that there is no individual per se, that the 'human' and 'natural' worlds are becoming indistinguishable, that we are all going to hell in this handbasket together and that doesn't mean it isn't beautiful--resonate with me deeply, while also providing glimpses of specificity. I loved the work exploring Chernobyl, the deep dive into any colony behavior, and the story of how trash travels on the US-Mexico border. It's incredible that we can live in a world where some humans pay such close attention to the world, while others pay none at all.
Definitely worth a read if you like to think on the Anthropocene and what it means to live within it.
Definitely worth a read if you like to think on the Anthropocene and what it means to live within it.
December 29, 2019
Eye-opening and important. I think I will use this book for my master thesis.
October 23, 2022
4.5
Finally was able to get my hands on this to read it from beginning to end (previously only read excerpts) and it was just as astounding as I thought it’d be
Finally was able to get my hands on this to read it from beginning to end (previously only read excerpts) and it was just as astounding as I thought it’d be
November 30, 2018
Although i read It almost by accident, this was a fascinating book. First, I devoured the excellently written double introductions (ghosts + monsters), as well as the wonderful double Codas. Then I surprisingly found myself reading most of the articles. I say surprisingly, because I am an architect, interested in the narrative reading of science proposed in this book, but theoretically not that passionate about lichens life-span, geology of mud volcanoes, or bacterial cosmologies in the human body. And yet, this quickly become in my mind the biology book that I should have had back in high-school. I felt a world and a way of looking at the world was opening up, and not in the usual dry learning style, but in the expertly told story-like style. Most of the articles in this book are simply excellent, both in form and content. FYI, I did enjoy slightly more the monsters half of the book. What a happy reading accident!
February 20, 2022
The wealth of well written essays by scholars in various fields thinking through the disasters of the "Anthropene" is unparalleled reading for imaginative and real science. The book is a constant go to for realistic mourning and the amazement of other than human creatures.
January 4, 2021
An absolutely fantastic collection of interdisciplinary writings which work to problematize concepts of individuality and linear "progress"—read both teleologically and purely temporally—through an engagement with novel theories in ecology, developmental/evolutionary biology, anthropology, etc.
Divided into two sections, the first deals with "ghosts"—essentially undertaking a hauntology of contemporary ecological landscapes, in an attempt to articulate the deep entanglements which produced them, and the "ghosts" of past beings/ecosystems/ecologies/entanglements which still linger amongst them—echoes of a past which exceeds its categorization as such. The second half of the book deals with "monsters"—"bodies tumbled into bodies"—articulating the essential imbrications and encasements which define holobiont beings (that is, "symbiotic assemblages, at whatever scale of space or time, which are more like knots of diverse intra-active relatings in dynamic complex systems than like the entities of a biology made up of preexisting bounded units [genes, cells, organisms, etc.] in interactions that can be conceived only as competitive or cooperative," to quote Haraway's contribution to the volume; Lynn Margulis's work on symbiogenesis haunts the entire volume). In so doing, the essays in the book's latter half work to dissolve the arbitrary individuations imposed by modernity's advance and its fetish for proliferating categorization/reticulation, thus working, in the process, to outline new ways of "seeing" and of "noticing" which might make it possible for us to contend with ongoing ecological devastation not merely as a series of individuated extinctions, nor even as the collapse of interconnected "habitats" or "ecosystems", but rather as the ongoing transformation of a living substrate—a transformation which, rather than proceeding merely from flourishing to collapse, instead presents as the emergence of a new form of holobiont being, one with its own, freshly adapted/developed "arts of living." To quote a pair of authors who might seem odd companions to those collected herein: "Catastrophe is the past coming apart. Anastrophe is the future coming together. Seen from within history, divergence is reaching critical proportions. From the matrix, crisis is a convergence misinterpreted by mankind" (Plant & Land, "Cyberpositive"); to read the present ecological crisis not as the collapse of a stable system, but rather as its continuance through the convergence of a new form of being-with, is to read into disaster the seeds of a future yet-to-be (to engage that utopian impulse which Frederic Jameson finds inherent in the dialectical movement of human thought and its imaginary [see "Utopia as Replication," from Valences of the Dialectic]), a future which we, as humans—imbued with those very powers which have given rise to the present "catastrophe" in the first place—might be situated to "help along", in the process finding our own place within that future-yet-to-come and yet already-converging.
That said, I should close by noting that one of the most admirable qualities of this collection is its near-universal accessibility (in contrast to this review, I should note; "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one"). The exceptions are all-too-predictable: Donna Haraway outlines some important concepts, but loses the plot a bit in trying to articulate them in terms of processes of artistic creation; Karen Barad brings her formidable intellectual talents to bear on an essay that feels more like an introduction to an unwritten book-to-be, than a contribution to the present collection (bar a broad thematic overlap). Aside from these few exceptions, however, the book is exceptionally inviting in how it's written, and its structure (introduction, sets of essays subdivided by interstitial commentaries which restate and refine the themes of the collection as a whole, each half closing with a coda which seeks to articulate "what is to be done" in light of the collected texts) helps ensure that the occasional outbreaks of poetic indulgence can serve their purpose of enlivening the text without obscuring the fundamental intentionality of the whole.
Highly recommended. One of the most stimulating and engaging books I've read in a while, and despite the name, hardly a collection I'd classify as either "depressive" or "pessimistic", nor as falling prey to a naïve optimism; rather, in reading disaster as possibility, collapse as emergence, catastrophe as anastrophe, and so on, it prods the reader to engage with the real collapse of present entanglements without falling prey to either nihilistic surrender or hopeless nostalgia. An important task, to say the least.
Divided into two sections, the first deals with "ghosts"—essentially undertaking a hauntology of contemporary ecological landscapes, in an attempt to articulate the deep entanglements which produced them, and the "ghosts" of past beings/ecosystems/ecologies/entanglements which still linger amongst them—echoes of a past which exceeds its categorization as such. The second half of the book deals with "monsters"—"bodies tumbled into bodies"—articulating the essential imbrications and encasements which define holobiont beings (that is, "symbiotic assemblages, at whatever scale of space or time, which are more like knots of diverse intra-active relatings in dynamic complex systems than like the entities of a biology made up of preexisting bounded units [genes, cells, organisms, etc.] in interactions that can be conceived only as competitive or cooperative," to quote Haraway's contribution to the volume; Lynn Margulis's work on symbiogenesis haunts the entire volume). In so doing, the essays in the book's latter half work to dissolve the arbitrary individuations imposed by modernity's advance and its fetish for proliferating categorization/reticulation, thus working, in the process, to outline new ways of "seeing" and of "noticing" which might make it possible for us to contend with ongoing ecological devastation not merely as a series of individuated extinctions, nor even as the collapse of interconnected "habitats" or "ecosystems", but rather as the ongoing transformation of a living substrate—a transformation which, rather than proceeding merely from flourishing to collapse, instead presents as the emergence of a new form of holobiont being, one with its own, freshly adapted/developed "arts of living." To quote a pair of authors who might seem odd companions to those collected herein: "Catastrophe is the past coming apart. Anastrophe is the future coming together. Seen from within history, divergence is reaching critical proportions. From the matrix, crisis is a convergence misinterpreted by mankind" (Plant & Land, "Cyberpositive"); to read the present ecological crisis not as the collapse of a stable system, but rather as its continuance through the convergence of a new form of being-with, is to read into disaster the seeds of a future yet-to-be (to engage that utopian impulse which Frederic Jameson finds inherent in the dialectical movement of human thought and its imaginary [see "Utopia as Replication," from Valences of the Dialectic]), a future which we, as humans—imbued with those very powers which have given rise to the present "catastrophe" in the first place—might be situated to "help along", in the process finding our own place within that future-yet-to-come and yet already-converging.
That said, I should close by noting that one of the most admirable qualities of this collection is its near-universal accessibility (in contrast to this review, I should note; "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one"). The exceptions are all-too-predictable: Donna Haraway outlines some important concepts, but loses the plot a bit in trying to articulate them in terms of processes of artistic creation; Karen Barad brings her formidable intellectual talents to bear on an essay that feels more like an introduction to an unwritten book-to-be, than a contribution to the present collection (bar a broad thematic overlap). Aside from these few exceptions, however, the book is exceptionally inviting in how it's written, and its structure (introduction, sets of essays subdivided by interstitial commentaries which restate and refine the themes of the collection as a whole, each half closing with a coda which seeks to articulate "what is to be done" in light of the collected texts) helps ensure that the occasional outbreaks of poetic indulgence can serve their purpose of enlivening the text without obscuring the fundamental intentionality of the whole.
Highly recommended. One of the most stimulating and engaging books I've read in a while, and despite the name, hardly a collection I'd classify as either "depressive" or "pessimistic", nor as falling prey to a naïve optimism; rather, in reading disaster as possibility, collapse as emergence, catastrophe as anastrophe, and so on, it prods the reader to engage with the real collapse of present entanglements without falling prey to either nihilistic surrender or hopeless nostalgia. An important task, to say the least.
July 23, 2021
This is a book that everyone needs to read. It is almost a companion book to Donna J. Haraway's Staying with the Trouble. Haraway provides the theoretical depth while this book provides concrete case study samples of what a humanities-social sciences-natural sciences collaboration/conversation looks like. The inter-disciplinary integration of this Aarhus University school of thought provides ways to change the way we think about larger concepts i.e. individualism as a unit to entanglement as a unit.
How do we even begin to approach an issue such as climate change?
First, you begin thinking about Ghosts and Monsters. Two sides of the same coin. This two-part book offers outstanding snippets of works in ecology, microbes, ornithology, and mammals. I deeply admire the attention paid to the absence of things as a unit of analysis (i.e. ghosts) that counts how extinction should be analyzed. Monsters, though weaker in concept, I interpret here as the entanglement of beings. That is, a human is part microbe. A living organism relies on an ecosystem of unseen organisms that requires us to pay attention to. Ultimately, we are monsters, an amalgamation of beings unrecognizable from how we originally understand the world and ourselves. In the process of thinking about these things, these two collected essays are challenges to our mindsets and how to change them. The case studies are evidence of new truths.
The mindboggling shift in how we view the world, biology, evolution, and the environment begins here. I cannot emphasize enough that to tackle climate change, we need new ways of thinking and these multi-awarded scientists pave the way. This is a must-read for everyone. Simple and accessible.
How do we even begin to approach an issue such as climate change?
First, you begin thinking about Ghosts and Monsters. Two sides of the same coin. This two-part book offers outstanding snippets of works in ecology, microbes, ornithology, and mammals. I deeply admire the attention paid to the absence of things as a unit of analysis (i.e. ghosts) that counts how extinction should be analyzed. Monsters, though weaker in concept, I interpret here as the entanglement of beings. That is, a human is part microbe. A living organism relies on an ecosystem of unseen organisms that requires us to pay attention to. Ultimately, we are monsters, an amalgamation of beings unrecognizable from how we originally understand the world and ourselves. In the process of thinking about these things, these two collected essays are challenges to our mindsets and how to change them. The case studies are evidence of new truths.
The mindboggling shift in how we view the world, biology, evolution, and the environment begins here. I cannot emphasize enough that to tackle climate change, we need new ways of thinking and these multi-awarded scientists pave the way. This is a must-read for everyone. Simple and accessible.
December 10, 2021
I'm a Holobiont, I mean, we are
A collection of essays by academics relating their field of study to finding hope, peace, and/or resigned acceptance of the current state of our ecological affairs.
Some personal favorite essays of mine (in no particular order):
- "Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene" - Nils Bubandt
- "Establishing New Worlds: The Lichens of Petersham" - Anne Pringle
- "Noticing Microbial Worlds: The Postmodern Systhesis in Biology" - Margaret McFall-Ngai
- "Holobiont by Birth: Multilineage Individuals as the Concretion of Cooperative Processes" - Scott F. Gilbert
- "Coda. Beautiful Monsters: Terra in the Cyanocene" - Dorian Sagan
In my humble opinion, the four weakest essays were all by professors at UC Santa Cruz. Three of these essays I found particularly frustrating. All three were by professors associated with feminist studies and all used exceedingly obtuse academic language, the only essays in this collection to do so by the way. Each of these essays had moments of quite beautiful thoughts, but every time I found those points overshadowed by the made up words, excessively ending words in -ing, and generally not saying much.
One good outcome of these particular essays was that I learned about the intersection of ivory tower feminism and the subjects of hard science, which I didn't realize could overlap. I rolled my eyes pretty hard to the back of my head on first read, but still gave it a chance and (by performing external research) found SOME of the points valuable, though I'm still not convinced by all of them.
Still a recommended collection, I learned a lot about our microbial world and that life on all levels will still go on, past us anyway.
A collection of essays by academics relating their field of study to finding hope, peace, and/or resigned acceptance of the current state of our ecological affairs.
Some personal favorite essays of mine (in no particular order):
- "Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene" - Nils Bubandt
- "Establishing New Worlds: The Lichens of Petersham" - Anne Pringle
- "Noticing Microbial Worlds: The Postmodern Systhesis in Biology" - Margaret McFall-Ngai
- "Holobiont by Birth: Multilineage Individuals as the Concretion of Cooperative Processes" - Scott F. Gilbert
- "Coda. Beautiful Monsters: Terra in the Cyanocene" - Dorian Sagan
In my humble opinion, the four weakest essays were all by professors at UC Santa Cruz. Three of these essays I found particularly frustrating. All three were by professors associated with feminist studies and all used exceedingly obtuse academic language, the only essays in this collection to do so by the way. Each of these essays had moments of quite beautiful thoughts, but every time I found those points overshadowed by the made up words, excessively ending words in -ing, and generally not saying much.
One good outcome of these particular essays was that I learned about the intersection of ivory tower feminism and the subjects of hard science, which I didn't realize could overlap. I rolled my eyes pretty hard to the back of my head on first read, but still gave it a chance and (by performing external research) found SOME of the points valuable, though I'm still not convinced by all of them.
Still a recommended collection, I learned a lot about our microbial world and that life on all levels will still go on, past us anyway.
June 4, 2020
Collection of cross-disciplinary essays exploring the ‘monsters’ and ‘ghosts’ that have resulted from human impact in the environment. Style and topics cover a broad range but all essays are relatively quick Pulled a few quotes that stood out to me and that I think summarize these perspectives in the anthropocene well.
‘A world increasingly shaped by human activity but also increasingly outside of human control’ G171
‘Writers look for ways of reading landscape not as detached from humans but as densely populated by ghosts and afterlives of human activity that have been absorbed and enmeshed into the landscape’s own generativity.’ G172
‘Jellyfish are nightmare creatures of a future where only monsters can survive. ....we humans too are monsters. ‘PM1
‘Ghosts..help us read life’s enmeshment in landscapes, monsters point us towards life’s symbiotic entanglement across bodies.’ M2
‘The aluminum can is a fitting icon of modern civilization and industrial distribution. The botulism in the can is similarly an icon of the monstrosities of the anthropocene. ‘ M9
‘Philosophically I am a compostist, not a post-humanist. Beings- human and not- become with each other, compose and decompose each other, in every scale and register of time and stuff in sympoietic tangling, in early my worlding and unworlding. ‘ M45
‘A world increasingly shaped by human activity but also increasingly outside of human control’ G171
‘Writers look for ways of reading landscape not as detached from humans but as densely populated by ghosts and afterlives of human activity that have been absorbed and enmeshed into the landscape’s own generativity.’ G172
‘Jellyfish are nightmare creatures of a future where only monsters can survive. ....we humans too are monsters. ‘PM1
‘Ghosts..help us read life’s enmeshment in landscapes, monsters point us towards life’s symbiotic entanglement across bodies.’ M2
‘The aluminum can is a fitting icon of modern civilization and industrial distribution. The botulism in the can is similarly an icon of the monstrosities of the anthropocene. ‘ M9
‘Philosophically I am a compostist, not a post-humanist. Beings- human and not- become with each other, compose and decompose each other, in every scale and register of time and stuff in sympoietic tangling, in early my worlding and unworlding. ‘ M45
September 25, 2021
Easily one of the best books I have ever read. Urgent, insightful, haunting, beautiful. Above all: necessary. As with any essay collection some of the pieces will not have as profound an effect as others based on personal interest in the subject matter, but there is surely something here for everyone that will resonate strongly. I was more taken by the "Ghosts" half of the book than the "Monsters" side, but all the essays across both halves are quite good. Also, the layout and design of the book is excellent; worth another star if the content wasn't already at 5.
Standouts for me: "Symbiogenesis, Sympoesis, and Art Science Activisms for Staying with the Trouble" by Donna Haraway, "Wolf, or Homo Homini Lupus" by Carla Freccero, "A Garden or a Grave: The Canyonic Landscape of the Tijuana-San Diego Region" by Lesley Stern, "Marie Curie's Fingerprint: Nuclear Spelunking in the Chernobyl Zone" by Kate Brown, "Shimmer: When All You Love is Being Trashed" by Deborah Bird Rose, "No Small Matter: Mushroom Clouds, Ecologies of Nothingness, and Strange Topologies of Spacetimemattering" by Karen Barad, and "Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene" by Nils Bubandt.
Standouts for me: "Symbiogenesis, Sympoesis, and Art Science Activisms for Staying with the Trouble" by Donna Haraway, "Wolf, or Homo Homini Lupus" by Carla Freccero, "A Garden or a Grave: The Canyonic Landscape of the Tijuana-San Diego Region" by Lesley Stern, "Marie Curie's Fingerprint: Nuclear Spelunking in the Chernobyl Zone" by Kate Brown, "Shimmer: When All You Love is Being Trashed" by Deborah Bird Rose, "No Small Matter: Mushroom Clouds, Ecologies of Nothingness, and Strange Topologies of Spacetimemattering" by Karen Barad, and "Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene" by Nils Bubandt.
October 20, 2020
A beautiful, scary, informative and mindset-altering assemblage of essays, stories and art-pieces from thinkers and activists across fields of the humanities (or posthumanities) and sciences. Beautiful thinking on where the heck to go from here. The main thing that's lacking is instruction beyond this mindset, which could be summarized as working towards multikinded (as opposed to multispecies) connection and unity. What does this look like in our lives? How can we create community with these concepts and materialize them in our lives? These are questions that ARE answered (if only in part) in books like Staying with the Trouble by Haraway and The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing, but not deeply delved into by these thinkers. Essential ideas, though, for anyone looking for a place to put their hope.
January 17, 2021
A fascinating collection of essays that refuse easy categorization: from biology, to chemistry, physics, cultural and literary studies, "Arts of Living..." offers intrincate and intimate conversations with all non-human and human beings, dead or alive.
The "Ghosts" and "Monsters" sections often overlap, thus proving the overall thesis statement of the book: that easy splitting between categories/genres in an eerie, monstruous age of climate collapse and human-made catastrophes on a global scale is frankly a waste of time.
Instead of creating and upholding imaginary lines in the ground, "Arts of Living..." directs one to look inward and outward, to get into contact with the monsters, spectres, horrors and beauties of our age.
The "Ghosts" and "Monsters" sections often overlap, thus proving the overall thesis statement of the book: that easy splitting between categories/genres in an eerie, monstruous age of climate collapse and human-made catastrophes on a global scale is frankly a waste of time.
Instead of creating and upholding imaginary lines in the ground, "Arts of Living..." directs one to look inward and outward, to get into contact with the monsters, spectres, horrors and beauties of our age.
March 21, 2022
I thought this book was totally fascinating. I first encountered mention of it as part of an art exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery a few years ago. Basically these collections of essays are extremely interdisciplinary - combining biology, ecology, philosophy, feminism, history, literature. While there is a lot of science, it's generally easy enough to follow as a civilian, all though I did find myself wondering how much of the science might be considered "fringe". In any case, provides lots to think about from microbes, symbiosis, whether natural disasters are really "natural", how sometimes nuclear radiation is good, whether any creature can be considered an "individual", etc.
July 4, 2020
Really loved this, even if I didn't really grasp every essay. Some of the entries were just beyond my background knowledge, but for the most part the authors in this collection go to great lengths to make specialized knowledge universally applicable.
This book assuages a lot of climate doom with curiosity and calls to action. It was fascinated and will leave me thinking about it for a long time to come.
This book assuages a lot of climate doom with curiosity and calls to action. It was fascinated and will leave me thinking about it for a long time to come.
May 31, 2022
What an imaginative, rich conceit. I haven’t really read anything like this collection before. Truly interdisciplinary; as poetic as it is informative. Zoomed in, nuanced portraits of the natural world we live in become persuasive arguments for what’s at stake in the Anthropocene. These essays make use of myth-making and storytelling to help us see beyond what is currently entrenched… New metaphors and new interdisciplinary knowledges are the first step to creating a better world. 4.5 stars
April 28, 2020
This is a brilliant and thought provoking read on the condition of our planet, and ourselves within it. One to savour, and to read again and again. One of those books when you want to read every second sentence aloud to your best friends because it just so aptly captures the complexity of our world.
July 12, 2021
Everything about this is brilliant. Stories, musings, and research beautifully and accessibly written by amazing scientists and anthropologists. Insightful, artistic, brilliant. Can't praise it enough. I hope more than anything another volume is published...this is an important exploration of theory, environmental science, politics, and human impact.
December 12, 2017
An incredible (and honestly often mind-blowing) collection of multi-disciplinary essays on living fruitfully in our time, on a damaged planet. Poses questions worth puzzling over for some time to come.
April 9, 2018
I'm not a fan of academic writing. And this book is an anthology of mostly academic work. However, I think the subject matter is compelling and a few of the essays stand out as powerful pieces. I hope a similar book comes a long that's more accessible for a wider audience.
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